The present invention relates to a device for endlessly connecting ends of a ruptured steel cable conveyor belt comprising a plurality of steel cables by pull-resistantly coupling the ends which are oppositely arranged from one another.
Steel cable conveyor belts have been widely accepted in the production processes of the automobile industry. In these production processes a plurality of conveyor belts are usually coordinated with one another so that the endless conveyor belts must be operated with quasi fixed axle distances.
It is common practice that after a rupture of such a steel cable conveyor belt the ends of the conveyor belt are overlapped, and whereby the end sections of the exposed steel cables are inserted into one another and after positioning of rubber cover plates the steel cable conveyor belt connection is produced by vulcanization. This process requires a plurality of tools and machinery and is time consuming and, furthermore, the production process, respectively, the conveying process must be interrupted for this time period. Also, due to the overlapping ends the length of the steel cable conveyor belt is reduced so that for conveyor belts that are coordinated with one another (which requires that the axle distance is fixed) a new steel cable conveyor belt must be provided. Both reasons mentioned above result in a reduced operational availability of the conveyor belt.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a device of the aforementioned kind with which an endless connection of a steel cable conveyor belt may be achieved in a shorter period of time, whereby the connection may be realized at the site of the conveyor belt with simple technical means and whereby the resulting endless connection will participate further in the force transmission between the drive roller and the steel cable conveyor belt.